The Sickness
by unannehmlichkeiten
Summary: The Angels have been defeated, but a new threat emerges: a mysterious disease. Is this the will of God? Loosely based upon Poe's "The Sphinx." Please Review!


In those days, we truly believed that the Angels had been defeated. Though some had qualms about our motivation, whether it was just to kill messengers of God, most were content to no longer fear for their lives. Were our actions naught but self defense? Perhaps, though it may have been overly proud to challenge God by creating our own living creature. Evangelion had proved indispensable in dispatching the monsters; we were otherwise powerless. The AT Field, a holy barrier of the Angels, had been reconstructed as a shield for Evangelion; our pride in the face of God shielded us from the onslaught of his harbingers. Temporarily, at least. What we were not expecting was for God to adopt, adapt, and improve his strategy, and find a more cunning way of bringing his message upon us. One day, however, it finally happened.

The sickness had originated in the very center of Tokyo 3, infecting many residents. Those who received the sickness, who we refer to as 'the stricken,' were overcome by madness, their very psyches were being assaulted. After a week of madness, accompanied by growing fever and jaundice, the stricken would become silent, and finally cry tears of blood until they slowly deteriorated into death.

It was difficult for many to accept, that we should be so suddenly overcome by a disease never before recorded. Some spoke of the sickness turning into an epic plague, as in the Dark Ages in Europe, just as graphic and widespread. Some spoke of this as the wrath of God, the deed which his Angels had failed to accomplish. All across the city, families mourned as best they could, though unable to even see the deceased for the quarantine on all the infected, both living and dead.

The greatest scientific minds could not comprehend the nature of the sickness, nor the manner in which it spread. It seemed to simply strike randomly, leaving no trace behind once the body was infected. It was as if whatever caused the sickness entered the body, then either phased out and dissipated into the ether, or perished and disintegrated into its principle parts inside the infected body.

That chaos was what forced myself, indeed all the high priority NERV personnel, into hiding deep in the remote mountains beyond the apparent reach of the sickness, where there had not yet been any recorded cases of the sickness. We were protected in a large compound, a fortress of sorts designed for such an emergency, wherein we were sealed off from the outside world, immune to the sickness, self-sufficient if lonely.

I, Ikari Shinji, was endeavoring to keep my spirits high, though it proved…difficult. It would seem that the people I now relied on to ease my loneliness were the very people with which I had the most dysfunction. Most difficult were the people I lived and worked with, those being Asuka, Misato, and Ayanami. Nevertheless, through many weeks of seclusion, we learned to make the best of our predicament, and became more relaxed in our fortress. There was talk of the outside, the suffering, but mostly of their idiocy in failing to have a secure location like ours. Slowly we became to label the stricken and their kin as fools, idiots even; they were foolish for their attempts to live a normal life in the face of plague.

Many of my days were spent in a small library, designed I believe for aesthetic purposes first. It outclassed the rest of the fortress's furnishings; stark bare metal was replaced by painted walls and wooden furnishings. Mostly, I stayed because of the window. All the rooms in the fortress had windows to let in some natural light, but this one was at a level where one could sit and read with their face at in the sun's warm glow. So passed many an afternoon for myself and the other two children, keeping ourselves occupied with literature, and each other's company.

One afternoon, as I sat at the window reading, I had chance to look casually out to the hillside beyond. There was at first nothing out of the ordinary, though I quickly noticed something terrifying. A beast clambered down the hillside, in a path between the undergrowths cut by sediment during heavy typhoon erosion. It looked to be some two hundred feet log, and brought to mind the hulking monstrosities we called the Angels. It continued to descend into the valley below, and I turned to Asuka, who sat nearby.

I had her look out the window, but she could not see the beast; it had disappeared while I had averted my eyes. She scoffed at my desperation, and turned to Ayanami, who was generally disinterested.

Many other times I had sat there, hoping to see the beast one more time. Eventually, I turned to the books at hand, and found a dossier of the Angels we had defeated before. I looked through the text, marveling at the statistics. The beast I had seen vaguely parodied the parameters of the previous Angels, (I had already set in my mind that this was indeed the next Angel,) so I tried once again to convince my peers that this beast was indeed real. As I sat, pondering how to ask their help, I heard a light rumble, as of distant thunder. It continued, and I looked out the window. My eyes once again fell upon the beast, descending the hill as it had before. Odd behavior for an Angel, though perhaps this one had different goals. I saw it in detail, and was able to discern some major features.

It had a skull-like head, with an open face on which could be seen two glowing eyes and large mandibles. The skull-like head included a wide spine, which extended down the creature's back as it appeared to slide down the hill on all four muscular legs. It possessed four large black wings, polygonal in shape which seemed to flutter without providing lift. The legs that persisted back and forth were clad in some bone-like plates, similar to the skull head. Beneath the bones, it was a dark, scintillating black that seemed to act as a prism, reflecting rainbows of light instead of simple white light.

As I tried to scrutinize its features further, it stopped its legs, and turned in my direction. It became larger and larger, as it appeared to fly closer on its odd wings. I ducked below the window, looking up into the shaft of light streaming in above. Ayanami and Asuka took no notice of my actions, they were engrossed in their reading. As I looked up, wondering if it was safe to look up again, A tiny speck floated lazily through the golden light of the afternoon sun. I looked closer, and saw it was the beast I had seen pounding down the hillside. It would seem that the beast had not been two hundred feet long, and a half-mile away, but rather a millimeter long, and an inch from my eye, hovering down the window. Somehow, this strange creature had found its way in, and was moving across the room.

As it proceeded across the room, I followed, and realized all too late what it truly was. As it began to increase its speed, it changed course, flying towards Ayanami. It accelerated, and I watched as it flew straight into her neck, piercing her with its mandibles. Ayanami cringed, and collapsed on the ground. I rushed over, and watched in horror as the beast slowly dissolved into thin air. A shining of many colors brought it out of existence as I took Ayanami into my arms, hoping against fate that this was not the origin of the sickness.

Over the course of a few weeks, it became apparent that Ayanami had indeed joined the damnéd ranks of the stricken, and she was quickly quarantined. I went to visit her every day, those visits replacing my time in the sunny library. I would sit by the thick pane that separated us until, one day, as I watched, she suddenly approached the glass. I pressed my hand against the glass to try to meet hers as her red eyes seemingly began to leak their crimson essence. I knew, however, that this was the final stage of the horrible sickness, and that Ayanami would soon succumb to death. I stayed with her until, after a painful hour, she fell to her knees, gave one final silent cry, and breathed no more.


End file.
